ater Madeira and bad pump water and worse whiskey he
would keep as straight as a church deacon. Too bad he doesn't."

"Well," Harry answered at last, rising from his chair and brushing the
ashes of his pipe from his clothes--"I don't know anything about Mr.
Horn's tides, but he's right about Mr. Poe--that is, I hope he is. We've
both, got a 'Lost Lenore,'" and his voice quivered. All Harry's roads
ended at Kate's door.

And so with these and other talks, heart-burnings, outings, sports, and
long tramps in the country, the dogs scampering ahead, the summer days
slipped by.

CHAPTER XIII

Such were the soft, balmy conditions in and around the Temple
Mansion--conditions bringing only peace and comfort--(heart-aches were
kept in check)--when one August morning there came so decided a change
of weather that everybody began at once to get in out of the wet. The
storm had been brewing for some days up Moorlands way, where all
Harry's storms started, but up to the present moment there had been no
indications in and about Kennedy Square of its near approach, or even of
its existence.

It was quite early in the day when the big drops began to patter down on
Todd's highly polished knocker. Breakfast had been served and the mail
but half opened--containing among other missives a letter from Poe
acknowledging one from St. George, in which he wrote that he might
soon be in Kennedy Square on his way to Richmond--a piece of news which
greatly delighted Harry--and another from Tom Coston, inviting them both
to Wesley for the fall shooting, with a postscript to the effect that
Willits was "still at the Red Sulphur with the Seymours"--(a piece
of news which greatly depressed him)--when Todd answered a thunderous
rat-a-tat and immediately thereafter recrossed the hall and opened
the dining-room door just wide enough to thrust in first his scared
face--then his head--shoulder--arm--and last his hand, on the palm of
which lay a small, greasy card bearing the inscription:

John Gadgem, Agent.

The darky, evidently, was not in a normal condition, for after a
moment's nervous hesitation, his eyes over his shoulder as if fearing he
was being followed, he squeezed in the rest of his body, closed the door
softly behind him, and said in a hoarse whisper to the room at large:

"Dat's de same man been here three times yisterday. He asked fust fer
Marse Harry, an' when I done tol' him he warn't home--you was 'sleep
upstairs, Marse